Thank you so much, LGHT!!!! Excellent post with so many options. I have a 4 shelf, 4' 2 65k flor fixtures per shelf unit (4 tubes) per shelf, use mylar, and my plants go in-ground: I had to dig with shovel, in moist soil, the roots of naga morich, yellow 7's--well about everything, out this year. Of course, have amended (and amended) clay soil here since 2005. I do plant some stuff in pots, like manzanos, but this is the mix I use and it seems to work, even if a touch not K.I.S.S., which would work: peat, perlite, vermiculite, a little compost works. But when making this stuff up in batches, I like to do it in some bulk:
Double or triple this for seed-starting mix but easier to do one batch at time in wheelbarrow and bag:
5 gallon bucket sphagnum peat moss
3 gallons perlite
2 gallons vermiculite
1 gallon hot-composted, screened horse manure (pasteurize at 200 degrees until internally 160 degrees and no more, for 30 minutes)
2 quarts vermicompost not pasteurized, screened
1/3 cup azomite (mined from Utah—cute name for micronutes, A-Z.)
1/2+ cup dolomite lime—raises/stabilizes soil pH as peat is acidic and chinense in particular don't like acidic from my experience.
1/2 cup kelp meal—nitrogen and potassium, trace minerals, amino acids, micronutes
1.5 cups rock phosphate—cal and phosphorous, iron
2 cups greensand—potassium, silica (“wetting agent&rdquo
, magnesium, calcium, micronutes
1.5 cups blood meal—nitrogen
1/2 cup bone meal—calcium and phosphorous
1 cup+ whole ground cornmeal—for fungal disease prevention
< 1 oz. granular (Plant Success or RTI Xtreme) mycorrhizae or can soak seeds in mycoblast after hydrogen peroxide soak--not gotten brave enough to do the 10% bleach solution yet.
When watering soil-less from bottom overnight with warm distilled or de-chlorineated water with a little liquid kelp, and molasses, I add some actinovate to the first bottom water feed: one would think this defeats purpose of mycorrhizae but I’ve had no damping off, no fungal diseases (corn meal helps), as seedlings have grown, and it doesn’t seem to harm miniscule amounts of mycos, as I dust roots with mycos when potting up.
Also, on the pasteurization thing: I get horse manure every spring for next years grow and hot compost it. But since it's in a compost bin or bins, I throw other greens in there, as I get this stuff early spring--in fall, horse manure goes on big garden in spreader, with mulched leaves, turned under. And I just feel better about pasteurizing it a little, as although it's hot composted, aerated, I had a huge damping off a few years ago, overnight, wood stove on, fans on, no reason: nothing changed but adding the hot composted horse manure. This seems to keep the good stuff in and get the potentially bad stuff out. And gives me another use for the el cheapo brinkmann smoker. Can do a lot at one time too with a steel trashcan to dump it all until it cools off. Then bag it until the mix. Might sound like overkill but waking up to 100 flopped, deadern 4 o'clock pepper plants was an "overkill" I just can't forget
Also, I use more perlite than vermiculite for seedlings because I really want the "soil" to drain well. For the next pot up, I mix more vermiculite into the mix, but initially use more perlite just for areation.
Again, thanks so much for this topic!!
